According to testing by
Cnet (www.cnet.com),
the length of time between going online and your computer receiving its
first attack is now down to 20 seconds. There's barely time to duck, but
still plenty of time to panic.

Of course the question is, what is an
attack? The very word conveys a sense of imminent peril. In fact, the
reality is usually much more mundane.

If you browse on a commercial Web site, you
will typically acquire spyware designed to track your movements. The
purpose of this spy is not to take over your computer or wipe out your
files or crash your hard drive, but to send advertisements for more
products that seem to fit your interests. Go to a gambling site and
you'll receive lots of offers to sign up at other online casinos; go to
a stock market site and you will soon get offers to subscribe to various
tip services.

All of this, even the relatively harmless
stuff, slows the average computer to a crawl. We can start up an
unprotected laptop we keep and, because of such spyware, we might as
well go have a cup of tea while waiting for any program to load. The
dark side of commercial trackers is that the mailing list is often sold
or leased to other advertisers, and that's when you start getting tons
of junk ads for drugs, sex, illegal software copies and requests for
"urgent assistance" from relatives of Nigerian generals.

Malicious attacks often come from
downloading attachments without thinking about where they came from. But
the latest danger is malicious code embedded in pictures. You can
download a picture and bingo, you've got a virus, or a worm, a hijacker
or a trojan horse -- all of which are malicious attacks.

Where did that picture come from? It's not
going to be a problem downloading a picture of your Aunt Agatha or the
product shots on company Web sites. The most likely pictures with
dangerous code inside them would come from pornography sites. Recent
attacks of this type have been traced to a server in Russia, which
brings up another problem.

Your best defense is, as fictional detective
Nero Wolfe liked to say, "intelligence guided by experience." For
example, every day we get three to four suspicious solicitations to
review software that which we think contains spyware. The first time Bob
did this, figuring who knows, there might be something worth putting in
the column, the program turned out to be of no value and the aftermath
was a flood of junk mail.

A few more incidents like this followed, and
all review requests with a similar format are now dumped without
response. This is too bad for whatever honest programmers are attempting
to start a legitimate business out there, but some bad apples have
ruined the crop.

Defense, Defense

·
In the past few weeks, the use of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), by
far the most popular Web browser in the world, has dropped below 90
percent of Internet users. Just a couple of months ago it had dropped
from nearly 100 percent to 95 percent. On the flip side, as they say in
the record business, Mozilla's new Firefox browser
http://getfirefox.com just passed the 5 million new users mark, and
it's been out only a couple months. The reason: fewer successful attacks
through Firefox. Another popular browser considered relatively safe is
Opera
www.opera.com.

·
Microsoft IE has become so vulnerable we use it only through Secure IE.
This is a $30 program from Winferno
www.winferno.com. This protects you from hijackers, intercepts
malicious file downloads, blocks pop-up ads and adds various handy
features, like setting tabs for frequently visited sites.

We also have to note that user comments at
download.com are mostly
negative for Secure IE. The main objection seems to be the interface.
What can we say; we like it.

For an extra $10 you can get Private IE, an
auxiliary program that can be set to regularly remove your browsing
history, all cookies and temporary files. You should always set your
browser to remove your history when you exit. That way, the next spy
that creeps in gets no information on where you've been.

·
America Online (AOL) has worked out well for security. Bob has used it
for 20 years, and his only complaint is the flood of "features," like
having to watch movie clips on the home page. Of course, you have to pay
a monthly fee for AOL, but you have to pay a fee for Internet service
somewhere, whether it's up front or not.

·
Spyware Doctor is the toughest doctor we've been able to find. It finds
more spyware than any two or three other spy sniffers put together, and
kills what it finds. It's $30 from PC Tools Software
www.pctools.com.

·
If you're on a tight budget, the next best spyware killer is Spybot:
Search and Destroy, which is free from
www.download.com. It is simple to use and clean. Bob runs this three
or four times a day.

Internuts: The Buck Stops Where?

·
http://westegg.com/inflation: Round and round the dollar goes, and
where it stops nobody knows. Except that over the long term it goes
down. This Web site gives you an example of that decline for many time
periods. For example: $100 of purchasing power 50 years ago would be
worth approximately $15 today. Such comparisons are inexact, but
interesting.